


This Is Not Harmless (you are not breathing)

by Pistol



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Gen, Part One of a Two Part Story I never Finished, Va-va-vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pistol/pseuds/Pistol
Summary: The first thing Roque ever said to Jensen was that he was an idiot who was gonna get himself killed.
Kudos: 14





	This Is Not Harmless (you are not breathing)

The first thing Roque ever said to Jensen was that he was an idiot who was gonna get himself killed. 

Jensen, still just a kid, had nodded and asked if Roque knew of a place where pink flowers grew; like that was the type of thing people said after almost getting their throats ripped out. 

"Excuse me?" 

"Pink flowers," Jensen repeats with a roll of his eyes. "You know, _pозовые цветки. Rosafarbene blumen._"

"Why?"

Jensen ignores Roque and starts fussing at the open wound on his arm - the wound that hold more of Roque’s attention than he cares to admit.

In the silence Jensen looks smaller, lost in his own skin. 

The smart move would be to ignore the wannabe hunter and walk away. To let the idiot kid go chasing after his own death like so many others before him.

Instead, Roque does something stupid and drives Jensen to a botanical garden two towns over. He hangs back, watching as Jensen fusses with a patch of pink flowers before nodding.

"These will do. But I'm gonna need to borrow your truck."

"Not gonna happen."

Somehow it does. Roque's still not sure how, but in less than twenty minutes Jensen is behind the wheel of his truck, messing with his radio presets, and telling Roque that he hopes he isn't afraid of a little blood.

Roque drops his fangs and smiles in response. 

A smart person would have been scared — gotten out of the confined space and as far away from the thing that goes bump in the night as they could. But Jensen just blinks and starts giggling as he pulls onto the road. 

"Looks like Whedon was right after all. Carebears with fangs are real."

\----

Jensen drives them to an abandoned house that stinks of death. Inside of the empty living room there are two bodies wrapped in stained sheets, one tiny body resting on top of the larger one.

"Who are they?"

"Were. They're dead, so you need to say _were_," Jensen corrects absently.

"Who were they?" 

"Why do you care, Count Chocula?" 

Roque shrugs. "If I'm gonna help move their bodies, it seems like a reasonable enough question to ask."

Jensen ignores him, humming softly as he kneels to pick up the smaller body. He positions the swaddled body so it's cradled in the crook of his arm, a motion to looks more like muscle memory than conscious effort.

_Ah._

"Her name was Beth," Jensen stands, hollow eyes watching Roque as he moves to crouch next to the other body. "Jennifer," his voice cracks as he turns to head towards the front door. "She was my sister."

Roque carefully scoops Jennifer up and follows Jensen out the door.

"Don't people normally say something stupid about being sorry? You know, for," Jensen waves his free hand in the air between them, "my loss or something?"

"I'm not people, remember?" Roque reminds Jensen, earning another bout of frantic laughter as they load the bodies into the bed of the truck.

\----

"How'd you get mixed up in this?" 

"Dad disappeared for a while," Jensen grunts, hefting the shovel and dumping more dirt off to the side. "When he came back, he ate mom." he stabs the shovel back into the dirt before wiping at his face. "We ran. He followed."

"The nest?"

"Nest?" Jensen echoes.

"The den of vamps. The ones who almost killed you."

"Huh. I pictured it more as a lair, personally, but whatever," Jensen shrugs, "Well, dad's GPS was still active from his car. After I dusted him I checked it out. He had spent a lot of time at that house, seemed like it was worth checking out."

Roque pauses his work, looking over at Jensen as he continues.

"You would have gotten killed going in there unprepared like that. You know that right?"

Jensen snorts, emptying another load of dirt onto his growing pile. "But I didn't."

"Only 'cause I was there," Roque points out, feeling the faint stirring of anger.

"What? You want a trophy or something?" Jensen snarks. "And why the _fuck_ is a vampire hunting other vampires? Isn't that like a chicken eating chicken nuggets?"

"I got bored. Seemed like something to do to pass the time."

"Seriously? You _gotta_ get yourself a hobby. Like knitting. Knitting is _badass._"

\----

That night, Roque gives the too skinny and far too loud kid a couch to crash on. 

Jensen, instead of being grateful, complains for almost an hour that Roque's couch is lumpy.

"Shut _up_, Jensen. It's just for the night, tomorrow you gotta find your own damn place to sleep." 

\----

Jensen doesn't find a place to go the next night. 

Or the night after that.

Instead, he continues to crash on Roque's couch like it belongs to him and begs Roque to buy him waffles every morning.

"I'm a vampire," Roque reminds him. "You're a kid, a _human_ kid. I mean, fuck, how old are you, anyways? Eighteen? Nineteen?"

"Sixteen."

Roque groans, wearily running a hand over his face. "All the more reason you can't sleep on my couch, kid."

"Why not?" Jensen cocks his head to the side, and looks genuinely confused. "Is there a guest bed somewhere?"

\----

It takes almost ten years of Jensen complaining about his lumpy couch, but Roque's prediction comes true. 

There's no victory in being right, only a phantom pain in his chest and the scent of Jensen's blood in the air. 

For a while the world is fractured, and there's only him standing over Jensen's still warm corpse and feeling absolutely _nothing_. 

One of the smarter 'wolves, or maybe one of the dumber ones, turns to run. 

The movement flips a switch, and suddenly the world around him comes rushing back in. 

Time keeps moving, so Roque moves with it.

\----

He keeps the 'wolves, dragging their unconscious bodies into their- no, _his_ cellar and going through the motions of venting the anger he hasn't felt yet but knows is coming.

When the sun comes up, they shift back into people. Dirty, terrified people who watch Roque with their human eyes. 

It turns out, that if you scare a 'wolf bad enough - or if you hurt it bad enough - it'll shift back to its wolf form. 

It's truly fascinating, all the things you can learn when the kid gloves come off.

\----

Roque drives to the botanical gardens when the sun sets. He buries Jensen under the same obnoxiously pink flower patch Roque once helped Jensen bury his sister and niece under. 

He fills Jensen's left hand with silver coins and his right with dried aconitum flowers. Before he leaves Roque spills his blood over Jensen's grave to keep any curious predators away.

The drive back home is longer than he remembers. Quieter, too.

\----

The 'wolves are still begging, threatening, and pleading with Roque for their freedom on the second night. They do so in words and howls, but it doesn't matter what they say or how loud they say it.

The cellar's walls are ancient, built in a way that allows no sound escape the room. Roque too is ancient, and he also has no intention of letting them leave this room.

\----

On the fifth day Roque feels it. The rage blooms red and hot in his chest. It robs him of breath he doesn't need and leaves him feeling too full, too empty, and completely lost. 

His instincts roar and his hand shakes for almost an hour.

His hands are still shaking when Roque comes to terms with the knowledge that when Jensen died, he took with him the noise, laughter, and only tether to the world he had felt in centuries. 

Maybe longer.

On the fifth day Roque opens the door to the cellar to let the 'wolves out.

In Jensen's honor, Roque speaks only one word as six pairs of yellow eyes flicker anxiously between him and the possibility of freedom.

On the fifth day Roque says _run_.

The 'wolves don't live long enough realize the warning isn't only for them.

\----

When the first hunt is over Roque takes the heads of the 'wolves and burns the bodies. 

He sets the heads down in rows on the dinning room table, something he bought solely for Jensen's use, and uses his best knife to carefully remove their eyes before replacing them with chunks of salt from the Dead Sea. 

When Roque's done, he wipes down the table - stopping when it hits him that no one will be complaining at him tonight or ever again for dirtying the table and ruining their appetite.

He doesn't mean to, but he breaks the table, the wood splintering and cracking under his hands. It only makes the ache in his chest worse. 

Roque spends the better part of an hour picking the splinters out of his hands. When he's done he grabs a coat he doesn't need and heads out looking for a table he'll never use. 

\----

The table Roque finds looks a lot like the one Jensen picked out. It's maybe a little darker, a little rougher around the edges, but it's close enough that you can't tell it's not the original just by glancing at it. 

It seems fitting that the new table matches the other thing Jensen left behind.

\----

In Salem, New Hampshire, Roque places six wolf heads on the megalith and spills his blood into one of Jensen's _Buffy_ themed cereal bowls.

Roque dips a finger in the blood and presses it to the rocks, painstakingly writing out the story of a human boy who became a hunter, in a language as Roque himself. 

When the story is finished, Roque crouches down and paints the symbol for _hunter_ next to the symbol for _vampire_, carefully making sure their lines touch but don't overlap. Below them he smears a line of blood.

A gesture like this has never been made on this continent. A gesture like this hasn't been made in _centuries_, and _never_ to honor a fallen hunter. 

Roque thinks that it would amuse Jensen.

When he adds the symbol for _'wolf,_ he leaves the space next to and below it blank.

This wouldn't amuse Jensen.

There are perhaps a hundred 'wolves globally who will recognize what all this means. The foolish ones will get ready to fight. The smart ones will go to ground, cover their trails, and hope to wait it out. 

It doesn't matter in the long run, though. If he lives long enough, Roque will get them too.

\----

The 'wolf heads make the news by sunrise. 

Roque watches from his lumpy couch as words like 'satanic', 'serial killer', and 'prank' are tossed around by plastic looking humans.

It doesn't escape Roque's notice that after the report the meteorologist from Channel 7 twitches his way through the five day forecast.

\----

The meteorologist's body is never found, but a large canine is found mutilated in the woods behind his house. 

Roque digs an antique box out of the cellar that night and puts a single tooth inside it.

\----

Jensen looks upset with him. It's becoming the status quo.

Roque pretends that it doesn't hurt; after all, it's just a dream.

"He was a _lone 'wolf_. He was married to a human. He had _kids_."

Roque shrugs, unrepentant. "He was a 'wolf."

"Just _barely_! Fucker spent his time reminding people to bring an umbrella and reading his kids bedtime stories!"

"He was a 'wolf. He needed to be put down."

"Oh, _good_, that's a healthy line of thought. Condemning entire groups of people because you decide you don't like them can't possibly end badly. I hear that worked out really well for Radovan Karadžić. Kids are always talking about how they wanna grow up and be just like him," Jensen snaps.

"He was a 'wolf. He needed to be put down," Roque repeats. Arguing with Jensen has always been a pointless pursuit.

"You know, I met a group of people who thought something similar about vampires," Jensen runs an agitated hand through his hair. "But, see, I knew this guy who happened to be a vampire, so I _knew_ they were wrong. He's dangerous, yeah, but he was a good guy. Bitched when I didn't eat my veggies and let me listen to my music - even though he hated it."

Roque says nothing, turning to look out the window at a world drained of color and frozen in time.

"They tried to kill me. Do you remember that? Do you remember when my lungs collapsed on the way to the hospital? 'Cause I sure do. I've _never_ seen you lose your shit like that." 

"I remember."

"Good. Now, remember _why_ I almost died. I'll give you a fucking clue, it's because someone was thinking the way you're thinking _right now_." 

Jensen moves to stand behind Roque, looking out at the still city below them. 

"What happens if someone who isn't a 'wolf gets in your way, Roque? Maybe a friend of a 'wolf? A brother? A fucking pedestrian who was walking by and is trying to do the right thing when they see your psychotic ass? Will you kill them the way those hunters almost killed me?"

The dream ends before Roque can come up with an answer that he believes.

\----

Roque almost dies in Canada.

The pack he was tracking was made up of five 'wolves, but instead of five 'wolves there are three whole packs are waiting for him. He recognizes all the packs from his research and it doesn't escape his notice that these packs would have gladly killed each other on sight a month ago.

_Desperate times call for desperate measures,_ Jensen's voice whispers in the back of his head. _You're scaring them, Roque. You're scaring me._  
\----

It takes a whole week to heal from his injuries, but Roque's alive-_ish_ and has nineteen new teeth to add to the box.

In his dreams, the ones that he _knows_ he shouldn't be having, Jensen stares at the box and looks nauseous.

"How many are in there now?"

"More than one hundred, less than two."

Jensen nods, moving to collapse in the green chair by the window. He looks too pale, worn down, and Roque feels the familiar instinct to remind Jensen to eat or turn on the heater if it's too cold in the house for human biology. 

Roque gets as far as opening his mouth to say as much before he remembers that Jensen is dead. He can't feel the cold, much less the pains of hunger.

"You're better than this."

"I _was_ better than this," Roque corrects, "But then you died."

"That's not an excuse," Jensen snaps. "You _knew_ I'd die someday. I'm _human_, and that's what happens to humans, we _die_."

"You wouldn't have," Roque's voice cracks. He tries to find the courage to look Jensen in the eyes, but his courage, like his pride, is nowhere to be found. "You never did what you were supposed too. You would have lived just to spite death."

Jensen looks at Roque with bloodshot eyes made worse by the shadows under them. "Clearly, I didn't."

\----

Jensen stops talking in Roque's dreams.

Jensen still shows up in every impossible dream, always sitting in his ratty green chair and staring at the box of teeth, but he's looking paler and paler every time Roque closes his eyes.

"I never used to dream before," Roque tells him, breaking the silence. 

"Well, I never used to be dead," Jensen shrugs, and goes back to staring at the box.

\----

A djinn in Idaho buys Roque a beer and tells him he's a fan of his work. 

It's the first time Roque's killed anything other than 'wolves since Jensen died. 

It feels good, it feels _right_. Right enough that Roque finds himself looking over his shoulder when he doesn't hear an awful pun following the djinn's death rattle.

He remembers all too clearly why it's quiet when instead of a smiling man in glasses, there's a group of humans and a redheaded crocotta looking at him in various stages of horror. 

When Roque kills the crocotta, he doesn't bother looking over his shoulder.

\----

"You were my best friend," Jensen says out of the blue. "I never really had friends before. Just Jennifer," he admits. "But then she and Beth died. I remember that I felt like I had lost my mind for a while afterwards."

"I remember."

"You should. You saved me from those vamps. You saved me from _myself_ when the vamps were dead," Jensen leans back in his chair, hollow eyes studying Roque like he's their monster of the week. "We became friends, good friends."

Roque stays silent. He ran out of things to say five states ago.

"Have you ever had a friend besides me, Roque?"

Roque doesn't bother to answer and Jensen doesn't press for an answer he already knows.

\----

Roque gains twenty teeth for his box in Dallas. There's no skill or hunt involved, he's just in the right place at the right time. He celebrates with a beer he doesn't taste while he watches the local news anchors talk about a rash of violent deaths one state over that has all the calling cards of a rugaru. 

It's the first case Roque's worked alone and he finds himself getting through the social aspects by channeling a memory of Jensen. 

He remembers Jensen's smiles, and wears them like a mask to get people to open their doors to him. 

He remembers Jensen's body language, and uses it like a crutch to make people trust him. 

But Roque's _not_ Jensen. He's a hollow parody that shows too many teeth in his smile and not enough soul in his movements.

No one opens up to him to reveal vital information they way they always did for Jensen. 

After the fourth day he gives up the charade. 

There's more than one way to hunt a monster, especially when you know how they think.  
\----

In the end, the rugaru is a pile of charred remains and the young mother who was going to be dinner is safe, if not sound. 

"You'll be fine," he tells her without thinking. Jensen's platitude doesn't sound so convincing coming from his lips. 

The woman keeps crying, clutching the lifeless remains of her children to her chest.

"It gets better," Roque tries again, feeling useless in the aftermath that Jensen always managed to sooth.

The woman glares up at him. "How?!" she demands. "How can this _possibly_ get better?"

Roque shrugs, placing the jury-rigged flame thrower on her kitchen table. "It's just something people say to each other," he stands there, arms hanging awkwardly at his side, unsure of what to do or say. If he can't even fix himself, he knows he can't fix her. "You can keep the flame thrower if you want."

\----

The dreams stop and Roque's rest is once again filled with the empty nothingness that used to feel so familiar. 

He pushes himself twice as hard and he ignores even the most blatant signs of other monsters as he cuts a bloody path through the 'wolves of North America.

The news is full of missing persons reports that he's responsible for, each one a band-aid that doesn't quite manage cover the wound. But if he had enough, maybe, just maybe…

He listens to the anchors rationalizing the missing persons. He listens to the tabloids speculating on it being the work of alien abductions, the CIA, or even the rapture.

But, for all the insane theories out there, no one blames a vampire driving around in a '71 Barracuda.

\----

It's starting to feel normal by the time he reaches Ohio. Almost routine. Even the pain, while not gone or lessened, is starting to feel familiar. 

Something he expects and isn't afraid of.

Of course, that's when Roque wakes up to find a puma and a skinny man in a suit staring at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Was previously posted, then taken down. Now it's back up. Beware the errors and typos, I suspect the files I found on my old harddrive are the pre-beta versions.  
Please don't steal any of my silly stories and change some names around and then try to sell them as books on Amazon or I'm gonna have to take everything down again.


End file.
